Multiclass Championships

Hi there,

would it be possible to add a multiclass option to the custom championships? E.g. 10 GT3 cars and 10 GT4 cars, each class racing for victory and points themselves.

Greets Sascha

 

For that you would also need multiclass-aware AI, which is possibly the bigger issue at this point.
Also keep in mind that multiclass to some degree only makes sense if you lap the lower class at least once.
Otherwise you could just make it 2 separate championships.

Most of the championship races (didn't do all of them) are relatively short though. For a usual multiclass setup (~10s difference in lap time) with at least one blue flag, you need around 10-20min race time, depending on the length of the track.

 

Would love multiclass classification in a championship. Not sure it would ever be possible. I think, though I could be wrong, that rf2 might have something in the pipeline for this. I still enjoy multiclass racing with the AI as it is now. Maybe time to crack open a spreadsheet

On a slight (or maybe great) tangent was it ever denied/confirmed that AC could have mid race saving at some point. Wasn't sure if it was a dead NO or potentially on a list at Kunos somewhere.

 

Does any of this really matter? The sim needs flag-aware AI regardless, certainly. But multiclass still works without after patch 1.14, you'll just have some circumstances where the AI won't get out of the way and overtaking can take a bit longer, but the AI also can't directly block you in the first place. The rest isn't important, there's multi-class racing in all sorts of forms IRL, long races, short races, very similar performance levels or very different and with high closing speeds. Overlapping doesn't matter that much. The most important thing is simply to enable multi-class timing and scoring at least as a foundation in AC, it's always open for future improvements. What exactly is done with the systems provided by the sim should be up to the user.

 

I'm doing multiclass races offline and online regularly. I event organized quite a few multiclass multiplayer events and will do so again in the future.
So trust me, you don't have to convince me of multiclass …

I just outlined what requirements/thoughts one could come up with. Whether specific things are important or not is of course up to the respective person, in this case the developers.

 

Hm, maybe you misread what I wrote, I'm not sure. I wasn't trying to convince you of multiclass racing or anything along the lines. I just replied to what you wrote in your comment:

"multiclass to some degree only makes sense if you lap the lower class at least once. Otherwise you could just make it 2 separate championships."

So to your response. Again, no... it should be up to the user, and that would actually be in the interest of the dev. I'll explain in more detail: Unless the devs restrict it so much that it's just fixed pre-defined multi-class presets or otherwise restricted classes (which would be more work for them) I'd expect it it to more likely be a system where the offline player/online admin can define the classes freely (within technical limits I suppose) and in that case it's not important to the developer what's in those classes or if one can overlap another. Why should it? It doesn't matter for this if a class is two tenths or two seconds a lap quicker or how short/long a race is or has to be "to make sense", all that matters is timing and scoring to support multiple classes and eventually the implementation of flag-aware AI (to make overlapping easier) for offline play and in general respective penalties for ignoring blue flags (for example). In real life it doesn't even matter if the two classes are the same car! As I said, there's plenty of examples in the real world where classes don't have massive differences in pace. Just look at LMGTE Pro and Am. They can potentially per regulations be the same exact cars (if factory Pro cars didn't change, Am being at least one year older machines) but with potentially different BoP applied (something that's not possible for the same cars in AC) and more importantly with differently skilled drivers (mandated to have at least a Bronze + a Bronze or a Silver driver for example) which results in slower times. Similarly you could add a class of, say, M235i to a GT4 race to increase the grid size and make it more interesting. They're similar in pace but the M235i is guaranteed to be slower, hence separate scoring makes sense. This is stuff that should be up to the player/admin. So I see no reason to overcomplicate this system. Just provide a framework for users to work with. If you do multiclass racing so often that surely is something you'd want.

 

Yes, I read that, but I stand by my opinion that this doesn't make sense.
It's gap filler, but one I don't deem necessary, especially not in single player.
It just means that there are a couple of other cars on the track which – apart from the start – you'll never ever see and never care about. So what's the point of this?

I do understand why they make that choice in real live. It's because of money (and to some degree skill).
But even in that case, every series I know that does multi class is endurance.
I don't know of any sprint series (talking about a couple of laps here, let's say less than 10) that does multiclass.
The races would be so short, so why not just make it two? Better for the spectators as well. Which is most likely what everybody would do.

Of course that doesn't mean that everybody needs to share this opinion.

 

Hey Guys,

this Idea came to my mind because I really love simulating the VLN or WEC etc. And I agree, that the user would need to do longer races, otherwise Multiclass doesn't make sense. I for myself already raced against the AI for 8 or more laps on the NOS so no problem here. But before adding such an option, the AI would need further improvement in lapping other AI (in this case slower cars) and slower AI giving space to the faster cars when getting lapped. But after all this would be a good feature.